1 wxWidgets 3.0 and wxHaskell >= 0.92

1.1 Installing the easy way

The easiest way to install wxHaskell on Windows, is to use a wxInstall package. wxInstall Achelanne contains wxWidgets 3.0, compiled with GCC 5.2.0, the necessary DLLs, and an installation script to install wxHaskell. It is available in 32 bit and in 64 bit and can be used for GHC 7.10.3 and later.

wxInstall Abriline installs wxWidgets 3.0 together with the latest wxHaskell packages from Hackage and is available for 32 bit GHC, using GCC 4.5.2 and for 64 bit GHC using GCC 4.6.3; this means Abriline can be used (amongst others) for Haskell Platforms 2013.2.0.0, 2014.2.0.0 and 7.10.2, and MinGHC 7.10.1. The Haskell packages are installed locally.

Installation instructions:

If the most recent wxHaskell packages are already installed, unregister them first (with ghc-pkg unregister <package name>).

and run it with command wxAsteroids (the directory %APPDATA%\cabal\bin must be in your search path).

You can update to a newer version of wxHaskell by running Install.bat
again; for a newer version of wxWidgets, a new configuration of this package is needed.

1.2 Installing the hard way

This is something you do if there is no installation package available for your configuration, or you want to modify wxHaskell.

wxHaskell binds to wxWidgets, so wxWidgets must be installed first.
We will install wxWidgets with the GCC that is packaged with GHC, to prevent incompatibilities between object/archive files.
You need mingw32-make.exe from MinGW and sh.exe from MSYS in your search path (look for sh.exe in your GHC directory tree). If you do not have it yet, install GIT.
Download wx-config.exe (a new version for wxWidgets > 3.0) and copy it somewhere into your search path.

1.2.1 Installing wxWidgets

Install the wxWidgets source in C:\Libs\wxWidgets\3.0.2
Commands to compile wxWidgets and wxHaskell with Haskell Platform 2014.2.0.0 and later:

Set WXWIDGETS_VERSION=3.0.2
Set WXWIN=C:\Libs\wxWidgets\%WXWIDGETS_VERSION%
Cd %WXWIN%\build\msw

Edit config.gcc so that the following values are set:

SHARED ?= 1
BUILD ?= release

If you are using GCC 5.2.0 (which is included with GHC 7.10.3 and later), change CXXFLAGS as well:

CXXFLAGS ?= -std=gnu++11 -Wno-deprecated-declarations

(Without -Wno-deprecated-declarations, you will get a huge amount of useless 'deprecated' messages.)
If you want to compile 64 bit binaries, set the following as well
(64 bit compilation requires GCC > 4.6, which comes with GHC > 7.10):

Edit ..\..\include\wx\msw\setup.h, change line 788 (may differ in later versions of wxWidgets, look for the #define for none-_MSC_VER compilers) from

# define wxUSE_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT 0

to

# define wxUSE_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT 1

Set the environment variables

for Haskell Platform 2014.2.0.0:

Set HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR=C:\Program Files\Haskell Platform\2014.2.0.0
Set PATH=%HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR%\mingw\libexec\gcc\mingw32\4.5.2\;%HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR%\lib\extralibs\bin;%HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR%\bin;%HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR%\mingw\bin;%path%
Set LIBRARY_PATH=%HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR%\mingw\lib;%HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR%\mingw\lib\gcc\mingw32\4.5.2;%LIBRARY_PATH%

for Haskell Platform 7.10.2-a:

Set HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR=C:\Program Files\Haskell Platform\7.10.2-a
Set Path=%HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR%\lib\extralibs\bin;%HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR%\bin;%HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR%\mingw\bin;%path%
Set LIBRARY_PATH=%WXWIN%\lib\gcc_lib;%HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR%\mingw\lib;%LIBRARY_PATH%

There will be many linker warnings for old versions of GCC, those are solved in a more recent GCC version.
The result is now in %WXWIN%\lib\gcc_dll

If you get a message like

'c:/Program' is not recognized as an internal or external command,

there is probably a space in the path to an executable. It is better to
install the Haskel Platform in a directory without spaces in the full
name, but there is another solution: use the old fashioned short names, like:

Set HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR=C:\PROGRA~1\HASKEL~1\7.10.2-a

(Use the MS-DOS command dir /x to see the correct short names)

If you get a message about denied access: if you already compiled and
ran a wxHaskell program, the wxWidgets DLLs are loaded and cannot be
overwritten. Restart the computer.

1.2.2 Installing wxHaskell

Using the environment variables HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR and WXWIN from the previous subsection:

Set WXCFG=gcc_dll\mswu
Set CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH=%HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR%\mingw\lib\gcc\mingw32\4.5.2\include\c++;%WXWIN%\include
Set LIBRARY_PATH=%WXWIN%\lib\gcc_lib;%HASKELL_COMPILER_DIR%\mingw\lib\

1.2.2.1 From GitHub

You can get wxHaskell from Hackage and from GitHub;
to install the most recent version of wxHaskell from the repository:

Make sure that all below mentioned DLLs are in the search path and try a sample program:

Cd samples\wxcore
ghc BouncingBalls
BouncingBalls

Click with the left mouse button on the window to create new bouncing balls.

If you get an exception code 0xc000007b immediately after starting your wxHaskell program, there is a mismatch between bitness of your program and the bitness of the wxWidgets DLLs. Note, that the package wxc checks the bitness at installation time, but things can go wrong afterwards, like changing the search path to point to a different version of the wxWidgets DLLs.

1.2.2.2 From Hackage

To install the wxHaskell from Hackage:

cabal install wx

2 wxWidgets 3.0 and wxHaskell 0.91.x

Windows

Haskell Platform

wxWidgets

8.1

2013.2.0.0

3.0.1

8.1

2014.2.0.0

3.0.1, 3.0.2

Prerequisites:

If you want to install from Hackage: MinGW 5.1.6 and MSYS 1.0.11 (a recent version of MinGW will result in incompatible DLLs). You must select the C++ compiler and MinGW-make options when installing MinGW. Add the full path to directories MinGW\bin and msys\1.0\bin to your search path. If you install the most recent version from GitHub, use the same version of GCC as the one that comes with GHC (use command gcc --version), to prevent compatibility problems.

Environment variables:

GHC_VERSION: 7.8.3 (some recent version)

WXC_VERSION: 0.91.0.0 (preferably the most recent version, see Hackage)

2.1 DLLs

The following file can be found in directory wxc\dist\build\, after building package wxc in directory wxc:

wxc.dll (be sure to recompile and copy this one when you compile your application with a new compiler)

If you are using GHC 7.10.3 or later, the rest of the necessary DLLs can be found in the mingw\bin directory of your GHC installation. For an earlier GHC, you can find the DLLs in the wxInstall Abriline packages, or as described below.

The following DLLs can be found in directory "Haskell Platform\2014.2.0.0\mingw\bin\", or in ghc-7.10.1\mingw\bin\ if you installed the compiler only (change revision as needed):

libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll

libstdc++-6.dll

mingwm10.dll

Some wxHaskell applications also require the following DLLs:

uuid.dll

perl510.dll

libapr-1.dll

libapriconv-1.dll

libaprutil-1.dll

These DLLs can be obtained by installing XAMPP 1.7.4; the DLLs are in the directories:

xampp\perl\site\lib\auto\APR\UUID

xampp\perl\bin

xampp\apache\bin

If there are still DLLs missing, you can find out which, using cygcheck from the Cygwin project. Note, that you will get problems if you have both MinGW and Cygwin in your search path; it is best to specify the full path to cygcheck.exe, or copy cygcheck.exe to some location in the search path.
Sample command:

3 wxWidgets 2.8 and wxHaskell 0.13.x

Note that the best way to refer to WxWidgets in your PATH is probably to use the WXWIN variable that you set, eg. %WXWIN%\lib\gcc_dll

The guide has been tested with the following configurations. Others may work too:

Windows

Haskell Platform

wxWidgets

XP

2010.2.0.0

2.8.10

7

2011.2.0.1

2.8.12

3.1 DLLs

In order to run a wxHaskell application, the following DLLs must be in the search path:

mingwm10.dll; this can be found in directory "Haskell Platform\2012.2.0.0\mingw\bin\", or in ghc-7.4.2\mingw\bin\ if you installed just the compiler (change revision as needed)

wxmsw28u_gcc_custom.dll

3.2 Troubleshooting installation with cabal

These remarks refer to wx-0.13.2 and Haskell Platform 2011.4.0.0 on Windows 7.

Cabal package wx depends on wxcore which depends on wxdirect. By default cabal installs on a per user base, thus wxdirect.exe will be installed to c:\Users\<YOUR NAME>\AppData\Roaming\cabal\bin\. This folder must be in your PATH for cabal install wxcore to succeed.

Package wxcore-0.13.2 does not work well with wx-config revision 21 2006-10-19 (downloaded from here on Feb 2nd 2012). If cabal install wxcore fails with an output containing "Usage: wx-config [options]" try this:

cabal unpack wxcore

cd wxcore-0.13.2

edit Setup.hs and comment out/remove the line containing "wx-config" ["--version"]